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[academic-pirate]

Elsevier rewrites academic papers with AI -- without telling editors
or authors

  * Amy and DavidAmy and David
  * 5 January 2025
  * Science

The Journal of Human Evolution is published by Elsevier, one of the
largest academic publishers. All but one of the JHE editorial board
resigned last week in the wake of Elsevier rewriting papers with LLMs
-- without telling either the editors or the authors: [Retraction
Watch; Retraction Watch, PDF]

    Elsevier initiated the use of AI during production, creating
    article proofs devoid of capitalization of all proper nouns
    (e.g., formally recognized epochs, site names, countries, cities,
    genera, etc.) as well as italics for genera and species. These AI
    changes reversed the accepted versions of papers that had already
    been properly formatted by the handling editors.

    ... AI processing continues to be used and regularly reformats
    submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and
    require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage.

Elsevier was also slow with open access and charged authors much more
to publish in JHE -- $3,990 per paper! -- than its other journals. [JHE
]

Finally, Elsevier demanded JHE reduce its number of editors --
presumably thinking an LLM could do well enough. This was the last
straw after ten years of Elsevier cutting services to the journal.

John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a frequent JHE
contributor, supports the editors' position: "if there was any notice
to my coauthors or me about an AI production process, I don't
remember it." He feels "the real lapse is a more basic matter of
ethics." [blog post]

Elsevier applies stringent policies on generative AI to its authors --
but not to itself. [Elsevier]

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# Elsevier# JHE# John Hawks# Journal of Human Evolution
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